Letters to the Editor about Jeff Jacoby's Web exclusive columnPage 2 of 13 -- Jeff seemed upset that Kennedy had the nerve to compare us to Saddam. He demands to know why the liberal press is not condemning Senator Kennedy. Perhaps, Jeff, because Senator Kennedy has a valid point. Oh, it's true that the level of what our torturers did does not match the level of
Saddams, but Jeff uses this moment to say "equating the disgraceful mistreatment of a few Iraqi prisoners by a few American troops." Jeff is trying to say that his president and his secretary of defense knew nothing of these tortures. Well, they have managed to achieve Richard Nixon's "plausible deniability". But anyone who thinks that idea for this torture did not start farther up the chain of command than the poor "few American troops" that are now going to pay the price of the whitewash is a fool. If Bush and Rumsfeld did not know about it, they should have and they should have taken steps to see that it did not happen. We are in this fix because this president does not know anything. He has his agenda and that puts blinders on him. Bush did not pay any attention to the information coming to him before 9/11 about the suspicious activity, and he did not pay any attention to the information coming to him for almost a year about torture in Iraq. I wonder what is happening to our Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Don Ferguson
Senator Kennedy sure ruffled some feathers during his latest discourse in which he questioned the president's motives for going to war with Iraq and compared the harassment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers with the torture chambers of Saddam on grounds that he was greatly disturbed about the loss of human life and the devious squandering of taxpayer money to subsidize what he labeled a politically motivated invasion. Them are fighting words from the senior Senator, and even though I may concede some legitimacy to Mr. Kennedy's verdict, I am still not convinced whether his analysis is inspired by an acrimonious pre-disposition toward the president or by a sincere belief in his deepest moral convictions about the manner in which this war is being conducted. Still, I am sure it takes quite an effort for a self-proclaimed federally funded abortion advocate to credibly articulate a dual concern for both the loss of human life and the reckless misuse of taxpayer money. Miguel Guanipa Whitinsville
I've got news for you -- we've already failed in Iraq. Unless, of course, you define success as getting rid of Hussein. Then yes, we succeeded. But in the ensuing months, we have done very little for the Iraqi people. And Bush will never "reap the benefit of success" from this war. His approval rating is at an all-time low, and his closest advisors have lost the trust of much of the American people (Rumsfeld in particular). The most he can hope for now is to save a little face and not look like a complete and total failure as he pulls out of Iraq. And as for Kennedy's comments? They're painful because they're true. It's not propaganda, it's the sentiments of many of Kennedy's constituents -- myself included. Just because a politician disagrees with the policies of the current president does not make that person a "bitter Anti-American." In this case, it makes him someone who wants to see the ideals of our great country held up and lived by in even the hardest circumstances. And he has every right to call Bush out, because that is something our military, even if there were only a dozen individuals involved, did not do. Continued... |
